WE DISCUSS VANA'DIEL
Season 2, Episode 8
Seekers of Adoulin — Akihiko Matsui, Mizuki Ito & Masaru Taniguchi

How was content such as the setting and story for Abyssea decided?

I'm the one that came up with the basic setting for Abyssea's overall world and the final boss. It's a completely different world from Vana'diel in that anything goes, meaning that everyone on the team was pretty much free to do what they wanted.

So you're saying that compared to something like Wings of the Goddess, which was set in the present as well as the past, the parallel world setting of the Abyssea series allowed for a lot more freedom.

Yes, exactly. In fact, the first story element I created was that the possession of abyssite allows you to view and travel to this whole other world. I had it starting with Joachim, and he'd use the abyssite to show you that although Vana'diel is currently at peace, this parallel world of Abyssea was in complete disarray.

We couldn't create a brand-new map for just the Abyssea series, so we were forced to take existing maps and areas and skillfully find ways to make them look different somehow. So given those restrictions, it was truly amazing to see such a cool story dreamt up for the content. There have been many people who told us they like the Abyssea series for its story.

Actually, a source of inspiration for the overall structure of Abyssea's story came from the first trilogy of a famous sci-fi film franchise set in outer space.

Wait, seriously?

In the beginning, Vana'diel finds itself threatened, and then is thrust into a difficult battle, before eventually retaliating. In Part 1, "Vision of Abyssea," you definitely feel the threat posed by the enemy. The people's numbers are dwindling and they find themselves gradually pushed to the brink. Then in Part 2, "Scars of Abyssea," they start amassing on the battlefield before eventually beginning their counterattack. Finally, they achieve victory in Part 3, "Heroes of Abyssea." As such, you could say Atma is kind of like a "war." (laughs)

Or continuing with the homage, "May the Atma be with you." (laughs)

Now I'd like to ask you about Seekers of Adoulin. There was DLC available at the time in the form of the Abyssea series, so I imagine even the players felt like there wouldn't be the usual expansion disc levels of new content, but I think everyone was surprised when Seekers of Adoulin was announced out of nowhere at Vana★Fest 2012. What was the process behind the development of the new expansion disc?

I was actually working as the director for the updates at the time, and the general feeling on the team was that the Abyssea series would be the last large-scale area added to the game. On top of which, we had already exhausted the numbers that were used to register areas on the map. The limit for the area numbers was 255, which was a number that everybody felt would be more than enough when FFXI was first designed. However, we ended up reaching that limit approximately ten years into the game's lifespan. So even if we wanted to add new areas, there was no available area numbers for them. As a result, we figured that we'd just have to continue on with the usual version updates.

So your hands were pretty much tied by the game's specs.

I knew it was impossible, but by chance, I happened to be talking to a server programmer by the name of Shinichi Tanaka, and I asked him if there was truly no way to increase the area number count. He replied that we might be able to fake it by adding a value to the area number and then placing it in a separate container with the use of a programming flag that would tell the game whether to add the value or not. Using that method, we could get up to 512 maps.

So you instantly doubled the possible map count. (laughs)

I felt that it was something we had to do, so I immediately went to speak with Mr. Tanaka* and request that we get the maps team together.

You didn't waste any time.

No, not at all. We borrowed people from the FFXIV maps team and named a leader for the group, but we still didn't have enough people, so we turned to Matrix* for additional assistance. From there, we started working on the map for Seekers of Adoulin behind the scenes while development on the version updates proceeded as usual.

So did you come up with the world setting and story after that?

Yes. I ended up writing most of the world setting and the plot for the scenario myself up until the content was announced. I spoke with Mr. Saito*, who was in charge of the events at the time, and we came up with things like the characters, the Naakuals, and the Twelve Orders. Afterward, we also managed to get some of the visuals together, so we were able to announce the content at the Vana★Fest 2012 event that commemorated the game's 10th anniversary. We were working at an incredible pace, so I think people were quite surprised by the announcement.

So up to that point, you served as director for the setting details that Mr. Iwao* had worked on.

I think in the case of Mr. Iwao, he handled all of the finer details on his own, but I wasn't able to deal with everything by myself, so I just came up with the main points and then told everyone to create something from what they thought was interesting.

Did you make any requests for more specific details regarding the scenario?

I did have some requests for the heroine Arciela. She is often referred to as a kind of witch, so in order to help play that up a bit, I gave her a shortsword called Ortharsyne that was capable of summoning the Naakuals due to an ancient pact. Actually, in the original setting, Ortharsyne contained the founder king August's little finger inside it.

Interesting...

The story behind it was that August was about to lose a battle against Hades, so he bit off his own little finger and gave it to a retainer to take home. And due to the finger being housed within the sword, the ancient pact could be fulfilled. Just when I felt that she finally had a witch-like backstory, we were told there were some concerns regarding the content overseas, so I think it's some kind of claw or something in there instead.

Speaking of witches, we've had exorcists and witches* in past Halloween-themed events even before Seekers of Adoulin was released, but they feature stories about characters who washed ashore from Western Adoulin. Elements of that also served as the basis for Seekers of Adoulin's story. Furthermore, we also had a meeting where people came up with additional story elements in order to answer the question about what else could be found in the west.

The Seekers of Adoulin story featured many unique NPC models.

That was due to the passion of our game designers. They wanted to draw new artwork and simply create as many new characters as possible.

After Mr. Aiba* transferred to the FFXIV team, we didn't really have a central art director-type figure on the team, but there was a character model lead artist, a texture lead artist, and other people like that and they all worked together to get the job done.

You could say they were like our very own Twelve Orders.

At the time, I got the impression that the team was like, "Let's do as much as we can with the people we have."

With the three additional scenarios and the Abyssea series, much of the graphics were reused from previous content, so I think the design team had a lot of pent-up creativity, and it just kind of burst forth all at once. (laughs)

Yeah, I remember there being a lot of new monster models in Seekers of Adoulin as well.

Mr. Takenouchi* on the art team was responsible for drawing a lot of the monsters and characters. Then the various team leaders that I mentioned before implemented that artwork into the game.

I was very impressed that Kazushi Hagiwara* was responsible for the rune fencer and geomancer artifact designs.

Actually, he drew most of the characters themselves, not just their equipment. Mr. Hagiwara's designs were a big source of motivation for the development team.

Next, can you talk about the reason for introducing item levels in Seekers of Adoulin?

Right when I rejoined the FFXI team from FFXIV, the person in charge of the items was having trouble. The concern was that even though we were releasing a brand-new expansion disc, there wasn't much difference in the items, so it didn't feel very motivating for players. That's when we thought about taking the items well beyond what had come before. In order to do that, we felt that the idea of item levels offered a good way to distinguish just how capable an item's stats were. Ultimately, it ended up serving as much more than a power index, due to affecting things like your pet's level and other parameters as well.

That must have been quite the undertaking.

People's opinions on the system were divided at the time. There were also a number of ideas on what to do with the legendary weapons*, so we ended up giving players the ability to upgrade them (convert them to item level weapons).

At the time, there was another proposed idea in addition to upgrading the weapons. I happened to overhear talk of a feature that would let players lock their character's appearance, so I thought about giving them the ability to use the legendary weapons' unique attributes on their own since they could choose their appearance no matter what weapon they used. In doing so, I thought that players could use whatever appearance they wanted, but still take advantage of things like damage boosts when the weapon's stats rose with the item level updates.

So it'd be like they were being imbued with the powers of the legendary weapons. That sounds pretty interesting.

Although we thought it was an interesting idea, we realized that we'd also have to factor in various combinations of attributes, meaning it'd make it even harder to properly balance everything in the game. On top of that, there were a lot of players who wanted to use the legendary weapons exactly as they were, so that's why we ended up going with the upgrade option.

On a related note, what was the reason for increasing the item level values so suddenly?

FFXI had a level difference adjustment feature, although it was eventually dropped for areas implemented after Seekers of Adoulin. Therefore, small increases to the player's stats wouldn't really let them feel like they were more powerful, so we increased the base level so that they'd be able to notice a difference.

So if you wanted to increase it further, you could?

Yes, definitely. Firstly, we gave the final boss in Seekers of Adoulin a content level of 119, meaning that the item level cap is also 119. However, we looked beyond that for content that might be added in the future, and ended up setting the upper limit to about 150.

If you increase the item level cap, you'd also need to update the equipment for all of the body parts, excluding accessories, so I think it might be enough to drive you crazy... (laughs wryly)

I think so too. Furthermore, increasing the item level cap leads to numerous other things that also have to be updated in order to keep pace. That includes things like the legendary weapons and also the artifacts. We realized that it would be an impossible amount of work if we tried to keep track of all of them, so that's why we stopped at 119.

Seekers of Adoulin added the geomancer and rune fencer as new job classes. Can you please share how they were decided upon?

I ended up handling the rune fencer and geomancer because I was asked to oversee the job classes when I joined the Seekers of Adoulin development team. Neither Mr. Matsui nor Mr. Gondai were on the team at the time, so it was pretty tough work as I had nobody to consult with.

That's right; both of them were transferred to the FFXIV team. Were you told how many job classes to create?

No, not really. The previous expansion disc, Wings of the Goddess, added two job classes, so I pretty much just decided that we had to at least match that. Once that was decided, I knew I wanted to use a job from historical FINAL FANTASY titles for one of them, and then create another job that was unique to FFXI for the other. That's how we ended up with the geomancer for the first one. For the second job, I was discussing with the team about what to do when we noticed it was popular for players to use the red mage class as a tank during battle, so we started talking about creating a job based on that style of play.

So an in-game tactic created by the players ended up serving as inspiration for one of the new job classes.

There weren't any jobs that featured magic users who excelled in the tank role, so that became the starting point. Once we had the foundation in place, we started talking about what to call the job. Looking back at the FINAL FANTASY series, we found there was a job in FINAL FANTASY TACTICS called the rune knight. So we took that and eventually came up with the name rune fencer.

I imagine it was quite a difficult journey until everything was implemented into the game.

It was hard coming up with all of the spells and job abilities up to level 99. Also, the geomancer in FFIII and FFV made use of the terrain, but that's not a factor in FFXI, and it wasn't realistic to add in terrain for such a purpose, given the massive size of the world map.

That's for sure...

So we looked to the actual art of geomancy and learned about the concept of the "lifestream." That's how we came up with the idea of the geomancer drawing power from this lifestream that flows through the earth and using it to generate fields that can power up their allies. In addition to that, we decided to give them a way to power up themselves as well for more balanced gameplay, and then built on the design from there.

I feel that both the geomancer and rune fencer were fresh ideas that helped introduced new concepts to FFXI.

I think some of the quirks of the person who made them probably seeped into their design as well.

Iori* was also a huge help when creating them, going so far as to devise custom solutions for things that I probably wouldn't have bothered with myself. That includes stuff like the geomancer job trait where the effects change depending on the direction you're facing (Cardinal Chant).

There is the element of "pioneering" prevalent throughout Seekers of Adoulin, but how did the concept for it arise?

We felt that if you're going to be journeying to a different world, it would be boring if it was filled with things you already knew. So that's how we came up with the idea of the players exploring the land in order to colonize it. That concept was present in the scenario, where various enemies emerge to impede your colonization efforts, and then you run into the powerful monsters known as the Naakuals. Eventually, a labyrinth appears once you reach a certain level with your colonization, and you learn that it is sealed off by the Naakuals. In the end, Hades himself appears and is connected to the history of the founder king of Adoulin, which I think tied together the entire scenario quite nicely.

So the concept served to link the story and gameplay.

On the content side, we felt that even if it wasn't entirely related to the concept of "pioneering," we wouldn't worry about the more minute details as long as everything fit in a broader sense. We also made it so that your colonization rate doesn't decrease, which was based on player feedback.

I feel like Seekers of Adoulin was rich with content, including things like the various Reives, Skirmish, and Delve.

My background was in game content design, so once I became the director for the expansion disc, I wanted to stuff it full of content. I think it's also a sign of how I didn't want to be outdone by any of the other expansion discs.

In addition to the battle content, Seekers of Adoulin also added things like the Mog Gardens, but how did the plan for that kind of content come about?

Matrix worked together with us on Seekers of Adoulin from its planning stages, and that's where the idea of the Mog Garden was born. I then took that idea and made it into what was added to the game. Even back then, it was standard for social games at the time to give players some kind of reward for logging into the game every day as a way to encourage them to play, so we thought about ways to introduce that kind of feature to FFXI.

Like a kind of content that can be easily enjoyed daily.

Once we started looking at the various materials and resources in the game, we learned that the hassle of harvesting them yourself and the drop rates from monsters were leading to more people using bots* for such tasks. We felt if that's the case, why not give players a way to just easily gather them by themselves on a daily basis. However, we knew that if the content never changed, people would just get bored of it after a while, so that's why we added a rank that increases as you harvest more items and also the monster rearing feature, which made the whole area much more enjoyable.

I see...

There was also a proposal for beastmasters to be able to summon the monsters that you rear in the Mog Garden. However, if you end up making that a requirement for beastmasters, then you end up forcing the Mog Garden content on them as well, which I didn't want to happen since it went against the feature's intended purpose.

Speaking of the Mog Garden, I remember thinking it'd definitely be a success the first time I saw the Qiqirn child Chacharoon there. I think Chacharoon is one of the best character designs in all of FFXI.

He sure is cute, isn't he...

Originally, the Qiqirn were based on a character design that I received from Mr. Aiba after it was dropped from FFXIV. We used the Qiqirn in Treasures of Aht Urhgan, and then that led to the creation of the cute Qiqirn child in Seekers of Adoulin. Later on, we even made an in-game T-shirt (Jubilee Shirt) that features an illustrated Chacharoon on it. I think we should make some real-life Chacharoon plushies available as merch too.

I'll look into it. (laughs)